5 Weapons Systems to Reduce Collateral Damage

In the early days of the coalition air war over Libya, finding and destroying ground vehicles was easy because they were moving through the open desert. As the campaign progressed, Muammar Gaddafi's forces nestled closer to cities—and civilian buildings—to gain protection. Tactics like these in Iraq and Afghanistan have crated a boom industry in weapons that can strike targets without causing collateral damage. Technology has come a long way, and these are five of the best weapon technologies to do it. But the fact is air strikes will always come with a price.

CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapon

CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapon

Weight: 1000 pounds

Status: In service

"The starting point is reducing collateral damage, since it cannot be eliminated," according to defense analyst John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. The best way to cut both collateral damage and friendly fire in air war is through advanced weapons systems that can contain their force within a tight radius.

The PAW is a nonexplosive weapon designed for targets where blast and heat might be dangerous, such as fuel dumps in populated areas. After release from an aircraft, the PAW disperses a cloud of 3700 penetrator rods, steel and tungsten darts ranging from 1 ounce to 1 pound in weight. This metal hail zooming at over 600 mph saturates an area less than 200 feet across; the cloud stays concentrated because the rods are simply released from a casing and not blasted outward. In Iraq, the Air Force has used PAWs to destroy antennas on top of buildings without destroying the buildings themselves. In Libya, it could be used against radar dishes and military communications; Pike says that PAWs can also be used as antipersonnel weapons.

GBU-39B Focused Lethality Munition

GBU-39B Focused Lethality Munition

Weight: 250 pounds

Status: In service

Rather than a steel casing that hurls deadly fragments several hundred feet in each direction, the FLM has a carbon-fiber casing that disintegrates into harmless dust. In addition, the explosive filler is mixed with small tungsten particles that slow down rapidly due to air friction. This creates a concentrated zone of destruction just a few meters across, with little damage outside that radius.

The FLM—one version of what's called a small diameter bomb (SDB)—was first used in Iraq in 2006. "An SDB or SDBs can take out a critical section of a building, not necessarily the entire structure," says Gary Rodenberg, the program manager for Boeing's SDB division. "For example, just the radio room or a satellite dish in a communications facility, or perhaps a military jet in a hardened hangar that was intentionally co-located in a civilian airport." The weapon's smaller size is also an advantage. "SDB offers war fighters tremendous flexibility on today's ever-changing battlefields," he says. "Each SDB carriage on an aircraft's load-out allows the pilot to quadruple the number of surgical strikes they can conduct on each sortie."